407 
THE 
INVITATION TO SELBORNE. 
See Selborne spreads her boldest beauties round 
The varied valley, and the mountain ground, 
Wildly majestic ! what is all the pride 
Of flats, with loads of ornament supplied ? 
Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, 
Compar'd with nature's rude magnificence. 
Arise, my stranger, to these wild scenes haste ; 
The unfinish'd farm awaits your forming taste : 
Plan the pavilion, airy, light, and true ; 
Thro' the high arch call in the length' ning view ; 
Expand the forest sloping up the hill ; 
Swell to a lake the scant penurious rill ; 
Extend the vista, raise the castle mound 
In antique taste, with turrets ivy-crown*d ; 
O'er the gay lawn the flow'ry shrub dispread, 
Or with the blending garden mix the mead ; 
Bid China's pale fantastic fence delight. 
Or with the mimic statue trap the sight. 
Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still. 
The Muse shall lead thee to the beech-grown hill, 
To spend in tea the cool, refreshing hour. 
Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower ;* 
Or where the hermit hangs the straw- clad cell,t 
Emerging gently from the leafy dell ; 
By fancy plann'd ; as once th' inventive maid 
Met the hoar sage amid the secret shade ; 
Romantic spot ! from whence in prospect lies 
Whate'er of landscape charms our feasting eyes ; 
* A kind of an arbour on the side of a hill. 
t A grotesque building, contrived by a young gentleman, who used on occasion to appear in 
the character of a hermit. 
